(Poem by Olav H. Hauge that is so beautiful you'll just have to learn Norwegian for it. Something something blood, basically.)

So I went back over a bunch of photos from around this time a year ago, and it feels incredibly weird. Not only to avoid falling into the two holes of either I was amazing and still am! and/or I'm such a jerk and haven't changed at all...

Which is always a challenge? A teacher I had last semester described it as the genius-jerk spectrum, where at any given point you're either at the I'm a genius! or I'm a jerk... side of things.

Anyways.

Things like this.

So weird! Like, my hair. Gosh.

This is not about to be a post about how much I've changed (how little) or how fast time flies, and that is, in fact, all I know about what I'm currently writing: it will certainly not be this moral thing that I always end up clipping to my Evernote and then whine about or the Norwegian blogs about kids and families that I read lots of meaning into and then just... don't believe.

It'll be different!

I mean, this is the kind of stuff I did last year. In my studio, everything was a mess and I was painting/drawing with ink on the floors and walls (never to show anyone: my space was almost totally bare when the final show rolled around), and I was wondering about New York subway ads.

I still don't get it. I would sincerely love for someone to explain this ad to me.

No, really, really.

One night I felt very lonely in a big group consisting of "my people." I drank too much but look surprisingly sober in a photo I found when I googled myself.

And it always felt like everything started out like this, so simply. Cleanly.

And ended up like this: feet cracking and lots of pain but also really good and dancing?

I mean, I don't even know, and I write that all of the time. This is me thinking everything is very weird, and I'm about to graduate, and nothing and everything has a direction. Everyone is very keen on giving good and well-meant advice, but it all seems to go over my head: it has absolutely no meaning to me because I'm not there yet. I haven't lived that.

One thing I thought of today while accomplishments were being listed in class was that my father, 60 years old last year, just recently finished his bachelor's degree.

That's something I want to learn how to do. To do that. To do something like that.

It's 4:38 pm and time for oatmeal. All images by me.